“I’m sorry, Lars. I wish there was some way I could help.”
He found my company lanyard and put it on. “Maybe you can.”
“Oh? How?”
“Came through the barrier, didn’t you? Maybe you can get through the others.” He chuckled a bit darkly. “Bet that’s got his highness’s brain whirring.”
Okay, sure, that might be a possibility. “What goodwould it do, though, to have one person going through the barrier?”
He gave me a look like he thought I was slow. “Food would be nice. Could herd the damn elk back, too. Can’t tell you the last time I had a nice steak. Sick up to my eyeballs of chicken and pork.”
“So animals can pass through?” I was going to ignore the possibility that me doing the same made me more animalistic than the fae.
“They can. And not a one of them wants to be stuck in the winter.” Seemingly finished ransacking my stuff, he came around the table and leaned a hip against it as he faced me. “I haven’t seen it myself, but I heard tell some folks sent a horse back and forth through the barrier to Spring for a bit with a wagon they kept filling and emptying. But then the Spring side suddenly filled with water like a dam broke somewhere and the poor horse drowned. Had folks on that side swimming for shore well back from the barrier.”
“Shit, that’s terrible. So the curse can evolve to keep you miserable?”
Lars shrugged, crossing his arms. “Maybe.”
“Who cast the curse? Like, who cursed the courts?”
“No one knows.”
“Really? There’s no common enemy?”
He stepped away from the table and looked down toward the door out of the dungeon. When he saw or didn’t see whatever he was looking for, he said quietly, “Some think the princes brought it on themselves on account of the way they couldn’t get along. Others say the king did it for the same reason and that’s why he’strapped in amber. Being that curses require sacrifices and all, I side with the latter.”
Rumor had it that the king cursed his sons because they kept going to war with each other? That he sacrificed himself to stop them? If he’d thought killing people through starvation would be worth it to close the courts, how bad had things been?
“Any idea,” I asked Lars, “how to break the curse?”
He shrugged again and picked up the trail mix. “Curses are usually broken by doing something difficult. Sometimes it’s sacrifice. Sometimes it’s change. Could be this one wants us all to get along.”
“Do you think you can?”
He chewed thoughtfully. “After three years, I don’t much care where a body was born. Don’t put a knife to my throat, and I won’t put one to yours.” He pulled his coat closer around him. “I’d like to be warm and fat again, is all.”
“And have more work?”
“Nah. They could close this place down permanently, and I’d be fine smoking my pipe on my own front stoop for the rest of my days.”
Maybe the citizens of the Winter Court had learned their lessons and done the hard work of changing for the better. Sounded like it to me if the head torturer in the dungeon was okay with losing his job.
Was the prince so changed, though?
When night fell, Lars moved me from chained against the wall in the torture area to chained by my ankle to a wall in the corner with the fireplace and a cot. He explained how to keep the fire going if Iwoke to embers, and laughed at me when I asked why it wasn’t spelled to stay burning—magic isn’t free, boy. Then he left to go home.
Alone with my thoughts, the worries I’d managed to avoid all day started seeping in. I could get a drink of water any time I wanted, but there wasn’t any food aside from the three ounces of trail mix I’d had hours ago. Was I going to drop five stone, too?
And then it occurred to me that I’d read or heard somewhere that you weren’t supposed to accept food or drink from fairies. I just couldn’t remember why. Because I’d be trapped here? Because they’d own my soul? I supposed it was too late to save me now.
I wrapped the blankets Lars had left me closer around myself and scooted the cot nearer the fire. What were Wally, Bridge, and Zalman doing right now? I didn’t know if they’d come through the ring, too, or if they were trying to explain to park rangers how I’d disappeared. If they’d come through the ring, following me, why hadn’t they landed on top of me on the prince’s table? If they were still in Michigan, how would they ever get anyone to believe what had happened to me? I knew they wouldn’t leave me. I trusted that they’d do their best to find me.
But what could that even look like when I was in a whole other plane of existence?
If I was going to be trapped here for the rest of my life, I was for damn sure going to make little Prince Icicle learn his lessons and break the curse. Maybe then he’d help send me home just to get rid of me.
Chapter 3
